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Just Watch Out for the Fox Demon in the Ninja's Body

JAPANESE animation has nothing left to prove in the American movie theater. Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar for "Spirited Away" was the tipping point; now he and other anime directors like Isao Takahata and Satoshi Kon receive unreserved critical respect (and in the cases of Mr. Miyazaki and Mr. Kon, who are still active, regular American distribution for their features).

Japanese television animation, on the other hand, still has an image problem here. The shows that have become most popular -- like "Dragonball," "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and the dreaded "Pokémon" -- encourage the view that Japanese cartoons are intended solely to sell toys, games and trading cards to young children. Then there are the more adult shows that most Americans encounter only as occasional images flashing by on the news or in a magazine spread; these are, in the collective subconsciousness, even worse: creepily childlike, creepily sexual, creepily violent.

But it stands to reason that there are anime series worth seeking out, even if you're not a teenage cultist or an adult given to scouring the bins at the Virgin Megastore for a copy of "Sex Warrior Pudding." For one thing, there's the sheer volume: the Web site Anime News Network lists nearly 30 projects scheduled to start on Japanese television in the first four months of this year. There is also the fluid movement of artists and writers between manga (comic books), television series and feature films: even the sainted Mr. Miyazaki worked extensively in television before deciding to concentrate on films about 20 years ago. Finally, the boundary between cartoons for children and cartoons for adults isn't nearly as well defined in Japan as it is here, resulting in higher quality across the board.

Add it up and there must be Japanese television cartoons that share at least some of the narrative and visual splendor of the best anime films. In fact, more than a few of them are already on American television, hiding in plain sight on Cartoon Network's crazy-quilt schedule. Shows like "Naruto," "Fullmetal Alchemist" or "Samurai Champloo" put the vast majority of American-made cartoons to shame and can hold their own with most live-action prime-time TV; and by the standards of their network and their time slots, they're hits, with audiences in the high six figures. But for most employed adults, watching them will require the help of a digital video recorder -- or, if you don't have one, a 24-hour television guide and a case of Red Bull.

Cartoon Network mixes dubbed Japanese anime with American cartoons (some of which are imitation anime themselves) in all of its programming blocks except one: weekday prime time, which it reserves for its own productions. These are mostly joky, exaggeratedly cartoonish shows like "Ed, Edd n Eddy," "Camp Lazlo" and "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy," heavy on forced laughs and light on story or character. The Japanese shows make it into prime time only in the Saturday night Toonami block, which currently includes "Naruto," about a young ninja in training, the pirate adventure "One Piece" and the wacky "BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo," about a 31st-century warrior whose nose hair is a lethal weapon. Otherwise, they lurk in the early morning hours or pop up in the afternoon, and they come and go on the schedule without warning.

Tracking them down is worth the trouble. The typical American cartoon these days -- including the good-to-great ones, from "SpongeBob SquarePants" to "The Simpsons" to "South Park" -- is about arrested adolescence (with preternaturally wise children sometimes on hand to provide a point of view). The best Japanese cartoons, on the other hand, are about coming of age, with all the traditional narrative arc and character development that implies. In fact, what's most satisfying about them is just how traditional they are, at a time when American children's cartoons seem trapped in some sort of post-Hanna Barbera hipster echo chamber. (Cartoon Network may be thinking along the same lines: one of its newest series, "IGPX," is an anime, a straight-ahead auto-racing tale produced in collaboration with several Japanese animation studios.)

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This emphasis on storytelling and emotion shows through regardless of the underlying category -- ninja, samurai, heavy-metal science fiction. The most impressive may be "Naruto," which has the requisite fantastical premise. A fox demon that threatens a village is trapped in a human baby, who grows up an outcast; now a 12-year-old troublemaker, he determines to redeem himself by becoming the village's top ninja. The show also deploys the sort of visual touches that have migrated from anime into American cartoons: moments of stress or high emotion trigger wild distortions of faces and figures, or throw the whole cartoon out of its semirealistic mode into black and white squiggles.

But in American cartoons, such effects are often used strictly for their own sake -- in fact, a lot of shows seem to exist as a frame on which to string together a succession of oscillating limbs and telescoping eyeballs. In "Naruto," the effects always serve the story, which -- at least on the evidence of the 18 episodes Cartoon Network has shown (the show is well past 150 episodes in Japan) -- captures childhood loneliness, longing and exuberance as well as anything on American television at the moment. Its humor may be broad and its story lines simple -- it's a cartoon for tweenagers, after all -- but it also has moments of doubt and reflection, such as Naruto's late-night visit to a noodle shop before his first ninja exam, that would never play in a pumped-up American cartoon. The comparison is unfair, but "Naruto," as inconsequential as it is, has less in common with Cartoon Network's domestic lineup than it does with another portrayal of a rebellious, talented outsider: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Other cartoon lovers can find their own early-morning favorites. "Fullmetal Alchemist," about two brothers disfigured in an alchemical accident (one has several metal limbs; the other is an empty suit of armor), is touching and beautifully drawn and colored, in a flat, comic-book style somewhere between "Tintin" and "Prince Valiant"; in a recent viewer poll conducted by the Japanese network TV Asahi, it was voted the best anime of all time. "Samurai Champloo" throws together three misfits straight out of a high-class teen movie -- "Crazy/Beautiful," say -- and sends them on a quest in a semirealistic 19th-century Japan that looks like ukiyo-e as rendered by a graffiti artist.

And keep an eye out for two mini-series: the noirish urban thriller "Paranoia Agent" (whose opening-credit sequence, a grinning, propulsive response to the anime cliché of opening with hideous Japanese pop songs, is mesmerizing) and the brilliantly eclectic "Fooly Cooly," a six-episode surrealist tale of small-town adolescence, robots and guitar-wielding alien girls. "Paranoia Agent," whose 13 episodes were shown through the fall and winter, is now off the network's schedule, while "Fooly Cooly" will end its current run on Feb. 6. A Cartoon Network spokeswoman couldn't say that they would return, but she couldn't say that they wouldn't, either -- showing that there's one advantage, at least, to inhabiting the wee small hours of cable.